Black Rock Guardian

by Jenna Kernan

  He saw none of the posse’s vehicles as he pulled in. It didn’t mean they were not here.

  Despite the damage to the reception area and medical records, the clinic was open. Ty entered through the main doors to find the waiting room half-full. A desk and computer had been set up in the waiting area before a blue plastic tarp that covered the fire-damaged section beyond. The burned smell permeated the chilly air despite the fan set to high in the open window.

  Ty asked the new receptionist if he could speak to his brother. Kee appeared a few minutes later. Ty explained that he wanted Kee to take him through the clinic and out the back door, where he could cross between the buildings and into tribal headquarters.

  They walked side by side past the exam rooms and into the women’s health clinic in the back of the building.

  “Any word on Dad?” asked Kee.

  “Not yet.”

  Kee grimaced. “Maybe I should go out and see Mom after work today.”

  Ty left him at the back door and headed for the station, where he met with Officer Wetselline, who was manning the squad room with Kee’s fiancé, Ava Hood, the former Yavapai detective turned dispatcher.

  Ava used the radio to call Wallace Tinnin, their police chief, who was at home this morning. Ty waited in his office for the five minutes it took the chief to drive from his home to headquarters. Once Tinnin was in his office, Ty relayed everything that Faras had told him.

  “Be too much to ask, I suppose, to have Chino and Faras kill each other in a power struggle,” said Tinnin.

  “Any word from the prison on when my father will be released?”

  “Not yet. Paperwork is pending.” Tinnin offered Ty some coffee, but he declined.

  “Beth is not answering her phone. Can you get word to her?”

  “I’ll sure give it my best shot.”

  He was referring to Luke Forrest, the agent in charge of the Russian trafficking case.

  “You get cell-phone service out at your place?” asked the chief.

  “Sure do.”

  “So go home and I’ll call when I make contact.”

  Ty did as he was told and spent the rest of a very restless day working on replacing the head gasket on the ’76 Cadillac Eldorado and waiting for Beth to return or Tinnin to get word from his...what? Girlfriend? Supervisor? FBI contact? He was her informer and despite the night they had spent together, Beth had not included him in her plans. Ty had a good long time to think about the limitations of their arrangement, and the fact that just because he wanted something did not mean he would have it. His life had been full of many such dreams brought to dust by the heel of reality. He knew who he was and what he was. He had just forgotten for a moment.

  On the bright side, the Eldorado was now running and, man, that engine purred.

  When his phone rang at four that afternoon, he snatched it from his pocket on the first ring. The display announced that the phone call was from Kee.

  “Hey, Kee. What’s up?” asked Ty.

  “Abbie is missing.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ty straightened as his entire body flashed hot and cold. He swallowed, wondering if Faras would have dared to snatch his little sister.

  Beth and Abbie. That would leave him only two more girls needed. This was why Ty didn’t own a gun. He knew the limits of his temper, and his marines training ensured that he was a deadly shot.

  “Repeat that,” he said.

  Kee did and Ty felt his world tilting off its axis. He didn’t know how or why, but he was certain that this was his fault.

  Kee gave him the details. Abbie had been taken from their yard twenty minutes earlier. The police were there. Winnie Doka, one of the three girls fostering with his mother, had witnessed the abduction. But they hadn’t taken Winnie. To Ty that meant the attack was specific—his sister, and just his sister.

  “She said the guy was big, bald.”

  Chino, Ty thought. “What color was he?”

  “Brown. She thinks he was Apache.”

  “I’m on my way.” But first he would speak to Faras. He knew Faras would tell him nothing on the phone. He’d need to show up in person at the Wolf Posse headquarters if he had any hope of getting answers. He left Hemi at the garage and called Beth again before departing. His call was flipped over to voice mail. This time he left a message.

  Why would Faras take Abbie? Or had Chino acted on his own? Was it possible that Abbie’s abduction was unrelated to the Russian surrogate ring?

  He roared down the road to the Wolf Posse’s crib and slowed only long enough for the gate to gape enough to permit his Harley.

  Faras met him on the front step.

  “She’s not here,” he said, hands raised.

  But he knew she was missing. Ty rolled the bike onto its kickstand and dismounted.

  “You have her?” asked Ty.

  “Insurance. Your new girl, she isn’t a drifter. Is she? She’s a narc. So you got a decision to make. Either she dies or your sister does.”

  The rage poured through Ty and he took a step toward Faras. Chino lifted a double-barreled shotgun with a smile.

  “Go for it,” he challenged.

  “Beth or Abbie,” repeated Faras. “You pick.”

  Ty forced himself to breathe past the panic swirling with the rage.

  “What do you want, exactly?” he asked.

  “I’m sending you to settle up with the Russians, get our final payout and make the last delivery. You need four women. Get them any way you like. Take your narc as one, but one way or another, she disappears. Meanwhile, I hold your sister safe and sound until I hear from Usov that you’ve made the drop.”

  “How am I supposed to deliver four women?”

  “Apply yourself.” Faras glared. “Drop is tomorrow.” He tossed a piece of paper at him. “There’s the address. Four girls including your narc girlfriend. You could take those kids fostering with your mom. Three of them, right?”

  There were. Jackie, Winnie and Shirley Doka, Kacey’s sisters. Shirley was eleven. Ty felt something in his middle harden to glass. Had he really once counted Faras as a friend?

  “They expect you in a single auto. Take the Caddy you’re working on. That one has a four-body trunk.”

  Ty turned to go, but Faras issued a last warning.

  “If I hear you are looking for Abbie, I’ll be so disappointed and something bad will happen.”

  For the first time, Ty wondered if he had made the right choice by helping Faras take over the Wolf Posse. Ty’s father was vicious and volatile. But he did not have Faras’s capacity for manipulation. His father used his fists to keep order. Faras used the ones you loved.

  Ty paused and then spoke over his shoulder. “Understood.”

  He left Faras and drove toward Koun’nde. Long ago, he had handled his father without telling anyone in his family what he had done. They all thought that it was just good luck and his bad driving that had finally eliminated the dangerous tyrant from their midst. Ty didn’t believe in luck. But despite his attempts to keep his family safe, Colt was in witness protection, Kee and Jake had almost been killed by members of the Wolf Posse and Russian mob and his sister was now a captive.

  Ty’s back was to the wall. For far too long he had walked the fine line between the posse and the law. He was sick of it. Sick of trying to find opportunities to undermine the posse while still protecting his family and keeping himself out of the morgue. He was sure it had not been Faras’s intention, but in taking his little sister, he had flipped some switch inside Ty. He was no longer an ally or an attack dog or a turncoat, snitch or bystander. He was in this, and Faras was the enemy.

  Ty would not stop until he had his sister back and had destroyed every last member of this gang.

  His first call was to Jake and his second was to Detective Jack Bear Den. They w
ere meeting him at his mother’s house in Koun’nde. Beth and her FBI supervisor could catch up when they became available. He wasn’t waiting.

  He had twenty-four hours to destroy the Wolf Posse, capture the Russians and get his sister back.

  Jake was already there when Ty arrived and he had a police unit stationed across the end of the drive. Officer Wetselline moved to allow Ty access. Bear Den arrived shortly afterward. Jake had called Kee, who had uncharacteristically left the tribe’s health care clinic with Jake’s wife, Lori, in charge. Kee started talking to Ty before the dust from Ty’s bike had even settled.

  The men gathered in the circular dirt driveway in front of his mother’s home. Ty rocked his bike to the kickstand.

  Having four boys raised here in this modest home meant that May Redhorse had given up having a front yard years ago in favor of extra parking for her sons’ trucks, so there was plenty of room for the extra vehicles.

  “We need the help of Tribal Thunder,” said Jake.

  Tribal Thunder was the warrior sect of their medicine society, the elite group Ty had once foolishly wished to be asked to join. Stupid to think such a group would ever want him. But today, he sure needed them. Tribal Thunder was called into action whenever there was a threat to the tribe. They had protected Kacey Doka for a time after she escaped her captors. Ty knew that both Jake’s wife, Lori, and Jake were members of this elite band of protectors. Their entry only made his shortfall more painful.

  Kee interjected his opinion. “I’d call Kenshaw. He has connections outside the tribe.”

  Jake said, “Kenshaw has been working with the FBI on the dam collapse. He is the only one who managed to infiltrate the eco-extremists’ operation, and his cover has never been blown.”

  Bear Den scowled, thrusting his fists onto his hips as he narrowed his eyes at Jake. Ty got the feeling that this information was classified.

  Jake faced Bear Den. “She’s my sister, Jack.”

  Bear Den’s hands dropped to his sides and he nodded, then faced Ty. “Jake’s right. Kenshaw has connections all over the state. I agree to bringing him in. But we must also involve the FBI. The chief is getting to both Forrest and Hoosay.”

  Ty’s mouth twitched and his stomach squeezed in irritation. “Beth got a call last night about the fire and I haven’t been able to get a hold of her since.”

  Kee took that one. “The fire at the health care clinic damaged our medical records. We suspect it was a clumsy attempt to destroy evidence. Our firefighters made short work of the blaze. It will take a while to sort through the soggy mass of paperwork.”

  “There’s good reason to suspect that the paper records will not jibe with what Betty Mills entered into the computer system,” said Bear Den.

  “Why weren’t they removed already?”

  Bear Den shrugged. “Oversight.”

  “And Betty’s dead?” asked Ty.

  “Suicide,” said Bear Den. “Tore up her skirt for a noose.”

  Ty shook his head as he pictured Betty swinging from her designer skirt in her cell.

  “You didn’t have her on suicide watch?” asked Ty.

  “No, we did not,” answered Bear Den. “Because she was working with us, filling in the pieces. The FBI was building a case against the Russians, and Betty was hopeful because her attorney was working on a deal to arrange a reduced sentence and preferential placement. But something happened, because her death and the clinic’s fire on the same night is just too much of a coincidence for my liking.”

  “What?” asked Jake.

  “You ask me,” said Ty, “someone got to her. Yesterday she had one visitor, her youngest boy, Clinton.”

  Boy was a stretch, thought Ty, as Clinton was in his midtwenties.

  “Until yesterday not one of her three sons would see her. She had no visits from them or their children. But then Clinton shows up and his mother kills herself the same day.”

  Kee scratched his chin. Jake rested a hand on the grip of his service weapon, and Ty spoke up.

  “Someone threatened her family,” said Ty. “Clinton came to tell her they were in danger.”

  Bear Den met his gaze and Ty thought he saw respect in the big man’s expression.

  “My thoughts exactly. Now we have no witness.”

  “Wolf Posse or the Russians?” asked Ty.

  Jack shook his head. “Not sure. FBI is questioning Clinton now.”

  “Great. But how are we getting Abbie back?” asked Kee.

  Bear Den’s and Jake’s radios both came alive in unison as Officer Wetselline called from the end of the drive.

  “I’ve got Agents Forrest and Hoosay here.”

  “Let them up,” said Bear Den.

  “Tinnin is coming in behind them,” said Wetselline.

  His car moved from the driveway entrance and a black Escalade rolled past. Behind him, slowing down to make the turn, was Tinnin’s official SUV. The stencil on the back fender was the tribal seal. The front door panel carried the police emblem and the word Chief below in bold black letters. The police chief drove all the way up to the gathering and opened his door, swinging himself around to face them. His leg, broken in the dam collapse last month, was now in a black plastic boot that made walking awkward, but he was finally done with the crutches.

  Bear Den caught them up.

  “Seems we have two operations,” said Agent Forrest when Bear Den had finished. “Ty needs to make contact with the Russians tomorrow and simultaneously extract Abigail Redhorse from her captors in the Wolf Posse.”

  “The Russians are expecting Ty,” said Tinnin.

  “Anyone else shows up and we lose the possibility of locating our missing women and we lose Abbie,” said Jake.

  “We need to find Abbie,” said Ty.

  “And the missing,” said Beth.

  “I want Leonard Usov,” said Forrest.

  “You look a lot like Ty,” said Tinnin to Jake.

  Ty and Jake looked at each other. Jake’s hair reached past his shoulders and he wore it back with a black elastic tie threaded with red cloth, while Ty clipped his hair chin-length and wore it loose. Jake’s mouth often tipped down and Ty’s naturally lifted up at the corners, making it seem as if he was perpetually up to something. But their facial features were very similar, their eyes a near match and their builds close enough to be, well, brothers.

  “Yeah?” said Ty, inviting Tinnin to continue with a motion of his hand.

  “So we need Ty in two places,” said Tinnin. “He needs to make contact with the Russians. But honestly I would much rather have a police officer there to make that contact. And we need him to get past the Wolf Posse members who are likely holding his sister.”

  “You want Jake to pretend to be me?” asked Ty.

  “Yes. And I want you to bluff your way past the posse to get to Abbie.”

  “Don’t we have to find her first?” asked Bear Den.

  “I’ll take the kidnapping operation,” said Beth, calling dibs on Abbie’s abduction case and Ty all in one.

  “I’ll oversee the operation to make contact with the Russians,” said Agent Forrest.

  “What about the women? The Russians will be expecting me to be transporting four women, one of which is supposed to be Beth,” Ty reminded them.

  “Well, they are just doomed to disappointment.”

  Tinnin looked at Ty. “You know every member of the Wolf Posse.”

  Ty inclined his head.

  “So find out where they are, each one, because one or more of them has your sister.”

  “I’m supposed to be kidnapping women.”

  “Jake and I will handle that. You find your sister, and when you have her, you call me so I can arrest Faras.” Forrest glanced at the paper Ty held. “What’s that?”

  “Address of the meet,” said Ty.

&n
bsp; Tinnin held out his hand. Ty extended the page and Beth clasped his wrist, bringing his hand between them.

  “If he does this,” Beth interjected, “he does so in exchange for both the Bureau and tribal dropping any and all pending charges against him.”

  All the men stared at her. Forrest and Bear Den glared. Jake gaped and Tinnin smiled. Was she really negotiating an agreement for him?

  “Tribal will take that deal,” said Tinnin.

  All gazes turned to Forrest. Beth had made a play that clearly annoyed her supervisor. He was the one who could put forth her name for promotion. The way he was staring daggers at her, Ty realized the chance of that ever happening had just gone up in flames and she’d done that for him. Why would she do that?

  “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  “Just wait,” she replied out of the side of her mouth.

  “Whose side are you on, Agent Hoosay?” asked Bear Den.

  “Ty’s,” she answered.

  Forrest tucked his chin and glared at Beth. Ty held his breath. What had she done? Beth had publicly advocated for him in a time when Forrest needed the information he held in his hand.

  Forrest spat his answer. “Done.”

  “He gets the deal in writing today,” she said.

  Forrest nodded and motioned for the information with an impatient hand. Ty handed over the address.

  Bear Den lifted his chin toward Ty. “Faras underestimated you. Never figured you’d come to us.”

  “Don’t make me sorry,” said Ty.

  Jake pulled the elastic tie from his long hair. “Looks like I need a haircut.” He turned toward the house, and shouted, “Ma!”

  Ty smiled. Their mother had given them each their haircuts throughout their childhood, beginning with bangs and shoulder-length clips. Only Kee, who preferred short hair, went elsewhere for his grooming. Ty, Jake and even Colt, until he had left, all continued to have their mother cut their hair. If anyone could replicate Ty’s style, it was their mom.

  “What about Colt?” Ty asked Forrest.